A fashion brand views its AI-generated advertisement depicting Frida Kahlo behind the wheel of a bus as a "tribute" to the Mexican artist, but the viral ad has sparked significant backlash.
Here's what to know
According to ARTnews, Les Énervés founder Wakim Krari directed the campaign for the label, which has roots in Paris and Bali. It released the ad on Instagram in October and said it was made with "AI and a lot of patience."
The video's soundtrack moves from singer Édith Piaf to Britney Spears' "Gimme More" as a bubblegum-chewing Kahlo transports her passengers, including the Mona Lisa and artist Vincent van Gogh, whose missing ear is replaced by a metal prosthesis.
More background
Kahlo was 18 years old when a bus crash with a trolley severely injured her pelvis, abdomen, and uterus, and she began painting while recovering from the 1925 collision, as ARTnews detailed.
Kahlo also had a history of drug and alcohol use, and in the campaign, she had multiple drinks before driving through Paris.
"This just feels like disrespecting the dead," one user wrote on X. The post has 46,000 likes.
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Throughout her life, as ARTnews noted, Kahlo carefully shaped her public image, using her appearance — including her unibrow — to challenge expectations about gender and identity.
Her Tehuana skirts also foregrounded Zapotec Indigenous culture within Mexican identity.
The advertisement, however, turns those choices into visual jokes, including a scene in which Kahlo draws eyebrows onto the Mona Lisa.
The ad also shows her husband, artist Diego Rivera, trying to keep up with her. ARTNews wrote that the depiction simplifies a 25-year relationship marked by love and betrayal, including Rivera's affair with Kahlo's younger sister.
More broadly, using generative AI in advertising is controversial because of its potential to displace creative workers and lower quality and innovation.
"Slop, slop, and more slop the commercial," one Instagram user wrote.
AI also relies on computing infrastructure powered by the energy grid, and its operation can consume substantial amounts of electricity and water.
The technology can help optimize clean energy systems, but it also poses risks of misuse, including the distortions of cultural history raised by this campaign.
What's being done?
Les Énervés said the campaign was an act of reclamation.
"A hundred years later, she is the one driving," the brand stated. "Vincent and Mona Lisa are in the back. Nothing is going to hit her this time."
Mari Carmen Ramírez, curator of "Frida: The Making of an Icon," said Kahlo's image was becoming "subsumed" by artists and activists — and not always for the better. Products featuring her likeness range from Barbie dolls to tequila bottles, per ARTnews.
Meanwhile, Les Énervés has announced another chapter of the campaign featuring a new muse. Other AI projects have recast Kahlo as a Spice Girl or a chatbot inviting questions about her pain, marriage, and feminist beliefs.
Where can I learn more?
The Kahlo campaign raises questions about what's real in advertising and how people's likenesses are used.
• AI-generated ads are appearing without clear disclaimers, leaving viewers questioning what is real.
• Prada chose hand-drawn Christmas ads by a veteran animator as Coca-Cola faced AI backlash.
• In England, a woman discovered her ex-employer's AI ad used her face with alterations.
• Greta Garbo's heirs haven't ruled out an AI film comeback after a digital revival.
• Fashion fans mistook AI-generated outfit videos for real looks before learning they were fakes.
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